Sunday, May 6, 2012

Salmon inside-out

Back in April, Division 2 had a special visitor! Kevin came to our classroom to teach us about how a salmon survives in the river. He brought an adult salmon with him, and then he dissected it so we could see all the different body parts that help a salmon stay alive. 

This is an adult male salmon. Can you see its hook nose?
First Kevin showed us how to tell if an adult salmon is a male or female. This adult salmon is a male. You can tell because its sides are dark red and it has a hooked nose. Male and female salmon are different on the inside, too. A male salmon has two milt sacs and a female salmon will have hundreds of eggs! We saw male and female salmon just like this one, that were ready to spawn, when we visited Adam's River salmon run this September. 


The outside of a salmon's body helps it survive in the water. It has sticky slime all over its body to help it swim fast and slip away from predators. Do you know what animals prey on salmon? Salmon's body's are also covered in scales. Kevin showed us that a fish's scales are like a tree trunk - they have growth rings! You can look at the number of rings on a salmon's scales to tell how old a salmon is. We got to look at the salmon's scales through magnifying glasses. What other tool could you use to see a fish scale up close? 
  
Kevin removes the milt sacs from the salmon. 
Kevin showed us all the different organs you can find inside an adult salmon's body. !He told us how each one has its own job to do in order to keep the salmon alive. We got to take a close look at each organ. It got a little bloody ... but we didn't mind!





At the end of the dissection, we got a special demonstration from Kevin. He showed us how to fillet the salmon and slice it into pieces for drying. In Lytton, many people air dry the salmon with a little bit of salt to make stwen. We talked about all the different ways to cure a salmon, and discovered that some of our families can salmon, air dry salmon, and smoke salmon. Mmm! Have you ever filleted a salmon before? 

Kevin shows us how to slice the fillet to make stwen.



Can you guess what these different organs are? Leave your answers as a comment below! 

Organ #1 
Clue: This organ digests the food that the salmon eats. 



Organ #2 
Clue: Without this organ, a salmon would sink.




Organ #3 
Clue: This organ helps a fish collect something very valuable from the water - oxygen!




Organ #4
Clue: This organ is actually a pump made of strong muscle.
Like a house with different rooms, ours has four rooms, but a salmon's only has 2!




Organ #5
Clue: This organ has a twin, but they can both move on their own
to help a salmon see above and below itself at the same time!




11 comments:

  1. The 1st organ is the fish' stumache. The 2nd one is like the salmon's life jacket. The 3rd orgin is gills. The 4th organ is a heart. The last one is an eyeball.

    There is only five pictures, but there were more body parts. The black part in the middle was really dark and filled with blood. It was called the spleen.

    Do you remember all the body parts?

    From:
    christpher

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dear div2,
    Did you like to touch the body parts of the fish?
    Was it fun to see the brain?
    Do you like to touch the blood?

    From Fluffy.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dear Div2,
    Did you like to touch the insides of the fish?
    I know I did.
    Did you like to touch the slimy scales?
    My favourite part to touch was the spleen because it felt funny.

    love Jaylee

    ReplyDelete
  4. Dear div2
    Did you like to touch the fish? I didn"t that much.


    From Brooke-lynne

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. To Brookelynne,

      Even though I dident touch the fish I sill like touching fish because I touched fish before, just not at school.


      From Trinity.

      Delete
  5. @ Miss OC

    Organ#4 is the heart! And organ#5 is the eye!
    How did you put the stuf on the blog?

    From Ebony

    ReplyDelete
  6. @ Katlynn
    Did you like the eye balls?
    I liked the eye balls and the heart and the puny brain and the liver and I liked the ballon. Did you like the heart and the puny brain and the liver and the ballon?
    the End
    From, Riannon

    ReplyDelete
  7. @ Riannon
    What did you like? I liked the eye ball and the
    heart and the balloon and the puny brain
    and the liver.
    the End



    from Katelynn

    ReplyDelete
  8. To Jaylee


    Thats funny you were scared of the inside of a fish lol.


    From Trinity

    ReplyDelete
  9. @ Alexis

    I like your bloody hands. How did you get your hands all bloody?

    From:Ebony

    ReplyDelete
  10. Dear div2,

    I like the ballon that makes them float.

    And I liked the heart.

    From Preston

    ReplyDelete

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